Cleantech and Environmental News – Latest Headlines

A breakthrough in the use of renewable raw materials in chemical production has been achieved by Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) and its industrial partner AVA Biochem. The partners developed an innovative hydrothermal method to obtain the organic compound from biomass. Being a platform chemical, 5-HMF can serve as a precursor for various materials.

Last week, the European Commission presented a new action plan to facilitate the further development of the renewable ocean energy sector in Europe. A central element in this action plan will be to establish an Ocean Energy Forum, bringing together stakeholders to build capacity and foster cooperation.

A 3-million dollar grant from the U.S. Department of Energy will allow a University of Oklahoma multi-disciplinary research team to develop a novel biomass conversion process to obtain a bio-oil compatible with refinery operations.

A study from the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE compares the present costs for conversion of different energy forms into electricity and gives a prognosis for the further cost development up to 2030.

The chip can be placed on any sensing point of interest such as electrical cables, conductors, junctions, bus bars, etc. to detect electrical currents. What's more, it does not necessitate the use of additional power supplies and signal conditioners which are generally required by traditional current sensors such as Hall sensors, reluctance coils, etc.

The Energy Department's National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), along with partners from the Electric Power Research Institute and the University of Colorado have completed a comprehensive study to understand how wind power technology can assist the power grid by controlling the active power output being placed onto the system.

Biochemical reactions sometimes have to handle dangerous things in a safe way. New work from researchers at UC Davis and Stanford University shows how cyanide and carbon monoxide are safely bound to an iron atom to construct an enzyme that can generate hydrogen gas.

In 2009, a borehole drilled at Krafla, northeast Iceland, as part of the Icelandic Deep Drilling Project, unexpectedly penetrated into magma (molten rock) at only 2,100 meters depth, with a temperature of 900-1,000 C. The January 2014 issue of Geothermics is dedicated to scientific and engineering results arising from that unusual occurrence.

The CoLaBats iniciative works in provide new industrial processes for the recycling of the critical metals Cobalt and Lanthanides and key economic metals Nickel and Lithium, from waste batteries, significantly improving recycling efficiencies and metal purity from existing recovery routes.